Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man who was wrongly deported and then returned to the United States to face federal prosecution, pleaded not guilty to charges that he allegedly participated in a yearslong conspiracy to traffic undocumented migrants into the country, according to the Associated Press.
Abrego Garcia faces one count of conspiracy to transport aliens and one count of unlawful transportation of undocumented aliens after a grand jury in Tennessee returned a sealed indictment against him in May. He was arraigned Friday at the federal courthouse in Nashville.
Those charges were made public last week when Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Abrego Garcia had been returned to the U.S. to be prosecuted. If he is convicted, Bondi said he would serve his sentence at a federal prison and be removed to El Salvador after his sentence is completed.
Protesters gathered outside the federal courthouse in Nashville, carrying signs that called on the Trump administration to end immigration raids and provide due process. Abrego Garcia’s wife and other family members attended the hearing.
Federal prosecutors have asked a federal judge to detain Abrego Garcia as his court proceedings play out, arguing that he “poses a danger to the community” and is “a serious flight risk.” The Justice Department has claimed that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, an allegation that his attorney and family have denied, and said there is a “serious risk” that Abrego Garcia would intimidate witnesses.
But Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have accused the Trump administration of abusing its power and engaging in “delay and secrecy” in the process of returning him to the U.S. A judge in Maryland ordered him to be returned to the U.S. in April, but the Justice Department declined to do so for months, only to bring him back days ago so he can be prosecuted.
Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of his attorneys, said last week that he doesn’t believe Abrego Garcia will be convicted.
“There’s no way a jury is going to see the evidence and agree that this sheet metal worker is the leader of an international MS-13 smuggling conspiracy,” he said.
The indictment unsealed last week alleges that between 2016 and 2025, Abrego Garcia conspired with others to bring migrants from Latin American countries into the U.S., passing through Mexico before crossing the border into Texas.
Prosecutors said that he and an unnamed co-conspirator would pick up the migrants in Houston and transport them to other places in the U.S. They claimed that Abrego Garcia and the co-conspirator devised “cover stories” to provide law enforcement if stopped, like that they were transporting people for construction work.
Abrego Garcia and his co-conspirators “knowingly and unlawfully transported thousands” of migrants who are not legally in the U.S., the indictment alleges.
Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in March after he was arrested by federal immigration authorities in Maryland, where he has lived since arriving in the U.S. in 2011. After the man and his wife sued over his removal, an immigration official with the Trump administration acknowledged that his deportation to El Salvador was an administrative error.
In 2019, an immigration judge granted Abrego Garcia a legal status known as withholding of removal. That protection forbade the Department of Homeland Security from removing him to his country of origin — El Salvador — because he was likely to face persecution from gangs.
The Maryland judge ordered the Trump administration in April to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S., and that order was largely affirmed by the Supreme Court. But the administration resisted bringing him back to the U.S., arguing that the judge lacked the authority to require it to do so.
Abrego Garcia had initially been held at El Salvador’s supermax prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center, also known as CECOT. But he was transferred to a lower-security facility in April, the State Department said.
Bondi said the Salvadoran government agreed to release Abrego Garcia to face the criminal charges in the U.S. after it was presented with a warrant for his release.
Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have also moved to keep the civil case seeking his return active, rebuking a Justice Department filing after his return to the U.S. last week that claimed the Maryland judge’s order mandating his return had been fulfilled and the case is now moot. The Salvadoran man’s lawyers called the Trump administration’s handling of his case “pure farce” in a court filing Monday.
“Instead of facilitating Abrego Garcia’s return, for the past two months defendants have engaged in an elaborate, all-of-government effort to defy court orders, deny due process, and disparage Abrego Garcia,” the attorneys wrote, asking the Maryland judge overseeing the case to start contempt proceedings and impose sanctions on the government.
In response, the Justice Department said that it has “done exactly what plaintiffs asked for and what this court ordered them to do,” in facilitating his return to the US, and said it would file a motion to dismiss the case next week.
“The proof is in the pudding — defendants have returned Abrego Garcia to the United States just as they were ordered to do. None of plaintiffs’ hyperbolic arguments change that or justify further proceedings in this matter,” Justice Department attorneys wrote.
Nicole Valdes contributed to this report.
